Steven Gregory Drozd (born June 11, 1969) is an American musician. He is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter for the Flaming Lips, Electric Würms, and other projects.
Early life
Drozd was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up in Richmond and Rosenberg, Texas, with three brothers and a sister. He attended George Junior High and BF Terry High School. His father, Vernon, was a member of the polka band Vernon Drozd and the Texas Brass.[1] At the age of ten, he began playing drums with his father's band and later played piano in various country honky-tonk groups. After high school, Drozd moved to Oklahoma City and performed, mainly on drums, with a number of underground bands in the area.[2]
The Flaming Lips
Drozd playing both keyboard and guitar at the same time.
Drozd joined the Flaming Lips in 1991 as a drummer. While his style is influenced by the drum sounds of the 1970s, his time spent with his father's polka band helped him develop a sense of delicacy and syncopation.[3] His thick grooves, with episodes of odd-time funk, are interspersed with straight-ahead rock, mixing various genres. In 1999, while touring The Soft Bulletin, Drozd decided to assume guitar duties as well as bass, keyboards and backing vocals, using his drum tracks during live performances, but he still drums on the studio albums to this day.[4]
Other ventures
He is the songwriting/musician half of You in Me, a Neil Diamond-inspired duo, with Alan Novey on vocals. Drozd writes the songs, and he and Novey perform them as a tribute to Diamond.
The artist Imagene Peise, an alias for a collaboration between Drozd and Wayne Coyne, records elevator music-style covers and originals, culled from the home recordings of Drozd with imagery and myth from the imagination of Coyne.
Drozd and Coyne have a second group together called Electric Würms, with Drozd taking the lead role in the band. Influenced by prog rock, krautrock, and punk rock, their goal is to explore the outer reaches of traditional rock music, as well as to perform Flaming Lips deeper cuts. Nashville-based Linear Downfall completes the ensemble.[5]
In 2013 Drozd created and directed a volunteer group of music students at ACMUCO called the Mutating Cell Ensemble, whose goal is to experiment with polyrhythm and repetition. They have performed once.[9] Drozd composed and performed on the song "Mattress Warehouse" by Foxygen, off their album ...And Star Power, released on October 14, 2014.
